Brendan DeMelle's blog

In yet another brutal take-down of ‘Lord’ Christopher Monckton’s claims to royalty and relevance, Bob Ward at The Guardian exposes the fabrications Monckton has whipped up to endear Margaret Thatcher fans to his own ‘work’ as a climate skeptic.

Ward, who is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, was inspired to write the piece after reading Monckton’s outlandish claims in a blog posted on Anthony Watts’ blog.

In his guest blog on WattsUpWithThat, Monckton claims that, among all the advisers to Margaret Thatcher in the mid-80s, he was “the only one who knew any science.”

Monckton is not a scientist by any stretch, he holds a journalism degree. Apart from his recent paid speeches at tea parties and climate conferences as an anti-science crusader, his career in daily news and tabloid journalism has had nothing to do with science. But that hasn’t stopped him from pretending to be one. He’s like the fake doctor in the 1940’s advertisements who really, really wants you to trust him that cigarettes are safe, and it’s okay to spray DDT on your kids.

Ending a dispute that has dragged on for months, London newspaper The Sunday Times has finally retracted and apologized for an article filled with blatant misinformation and smears against the IPCC and climate researchers that it ran in January, creating a nontroversy which deniers tried to label “Amazongate.”

RealClimate.org more accurately dubbed the episode “Leakegate” after the Times’ reporter Jonathan Leake, who wrote the article in question.

Since the bogus article ran in January, scientists and researchers who study the Amazon have tried to correct the misinformation it spread. Chief among them was Dr. Simon Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds, who filed a 30-page complaint against The Sunday Times with the UK Press Complaints Commission in March. Lewis alleged that the paper had mangled his quotes, which ended up far from the remarks he actually made in interviews with the reporter, and that the paper had published “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change in the article.

The damage inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico from the BP blowout goes far beyond the ecological and economic impacts this catastrophe has wrought on the region. As evidenced painfully well in the video below, residents of the Gulf states are suffering from the horrifying realization that their beaches could be closed indefinitely, their family businesses ruined by BP’s negligence, and their lives forever tainted with the memory of Sarah Palin’s ‘Drill Baby Drill’ chant ringing in their ears while their eyes bare witness to every reason why

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has told reporters that he will vote against the climate bill that he helped to craft along with remaining co-sponsors Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). According to CongressDaily (sub. req’d), Graham says he doesn’t like “new changes [to the bill] that further restrict offshore oil and gas drilling and the bill’s impact on the transportation sector.”

As David Roberts at Grist writes:“Yes, you read that right: He says he’s bailing from the bill because, in the wake of one of the greatest offshore oil drilling disasters of all time, a bill devoted to reducing climate pollution does not expand offshore oil drilling enough. Such is the Bizarro World of the U.S. Senate.”

Graham previously yanked his name off the bill out of anger surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) decision to prioritize immigration reform over climate and energy. While some still hoped that Graham would suck it up and vote for whatever eventually became of the bill he helped create, he dashed all hopes of that happening today.

Climate deniers often like to talk about “global warming profiteers,” some mysterious breed led by Al Gore who, so the story goes, are out to make the big bucks off scaring people about climate change. But if there’s anyone making money off lying about global warming these days, it is “Lord” Christopher Monckton, who continues his globetrotting tour to hawk confusion and misinformation at the Bonn climate talks this month.

“This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.”

So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann in 1920.

Jeroen van Dongen of the Institute for History and Foundations of Science at Utrecht University in Holland, writing in a recent edition of the journal, ‘Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,’ describes the effectiveness of the movement that grew up to oppose Einstein’s theory. There are some striking parallels with today’s climate debate.

At a time when The Guardian just reported another poll showing a drop in concern about climate change, and a New York Times front page this week described Britons’ growing doubts about the science, its worth taking a look at that anti-science campaign, which was waged by Einstein’s critics because like today’s climate denial movement, the anti-relativity movement had some success too.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.